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ORIGINAL: Owner59

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ORIGINAL: MASTERMOLDER

Are you people out of your minds???? We pay about 80% of our income in taxes of one form or another. Be it gas tax, sales tax, luxery tax, ciggerate tax, alcahol tax, not to mention income tax. If our great leaders can not run the country on that kind of income then we need to hold their feet to the fire and remove them from office, be it by election or recall.  Our problem in this country is that we are too damn lazy to take the time and the responsibility to act.  Sooooo, where does the blame lie?  With you and me

80%?

Care to explain that?

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ORIGINAL: slvemike4u

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ORIGINAL: kalikshama

75.2% of statistics are made up on the spot.

How did you reach that number...I ,myself arrived at 66.66 %

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ORIGINAL: Owner59

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ORIGINAL: MDomCouple

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ORIGINAL: Owner59

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ORIGINAL: MDomCouple

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ORIGINAL: Moonhead

I'd imagine the main issue with a scheme like that is how access to universal assemblies would be set up, and how everybody's access could be insured in a population the size of yours. The only time a system like that has ever been tried is communes with a population of a few hundred tops or Greek city states where around five sixths of the population were barred from the assemblies.

Then there's the education DK refers to, though I suspect that's rather less of an issue given the taste most of your elected representatives have for dumbing down any debate to a scarily reductive and witless level.

(Not sure what Caesar and Nero have to do with this, btw: they were both unelected Emperors who allowed certain powers to devolve to the richer members of the aristocracy. No bastard else got a voice, never mind a vote, in the glory that was Rome...)

Exactly. There are several political structures that would work great in theory, but on the scale necessary to run a large country they would fall apart. Democracy and Communism being the most obvious two. Both would work great, in theory, if the population was kept to a small number. But, once you increase the numbers to the size of the United States (or nearly any country on the planet), it becomes untenable.

I don't think the American political system is perfect, by any means, and there are certainly a whole host of elected representatives who don't take the time to educate themselves before voting. But, in the end, I'd still choose a Republic over a Democracy any day.

Ummmm....it`s not a pure republic .......either........

Oh, I know. But, in the grand scheme of things it is closer to a Republic than a Democracy. I was just being succinct for the sake of discussion. I suppose I should have said "I'll still choose a quasi-Republic with Democratic, Socialist, and Fascist tendencies over a pure Democracy any day."

And this semantics game is meaningful ,how?



Please..... do tell.....

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ORIGINAL: Anaxagoras

The question as I see it comes down to direct or indirect democracy. When direct democracy existed in Athens, the paragon of nation state democracy at the time, there were concerns about it. Socrates and Plato disliked the system intensely because the “ignorant” masses were ruling the roost, which resulted in their nation loosing the Thirty Years War against Sparta, and ultimately Athenian culture fading…

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ORIGINAL: Kana

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ORIGINAL: Owner59

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ORIGINAL: MASTERMOLDER

Are you people out of your minds???? We pay about 80% of our income in taxes of one form or another. Be it gas tax, sales tax, luxery tax, ciggerate tax, alcahol tax, not to mention income tax. If our great leaders can not run the country on that kind of income then we need to hold their feet to the fire and remove them from office, be it by election or recall.  Our problem in this country is that we are too damn lazy to take the time and the responsibility to act.  Sooooo, where does the blame lie?  With you and me

80%?

Care to explain that?

Yeah, I think in America even the highest tax brackets max out at about 50% of gross income when ya add up all the little taxes and bites the govt takes

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ORIGINAL: MDomCouple

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ORIGINAL: Owner59

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ORIGINAL: MDomCouple

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ORIGINAL: Owner59

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ORIGINAL: MDomCouple

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ORIGINAL: Moonhead

I'd imagine the main issue with a scheme like that is how access to universal assemblies would be set up, and how everybody's access could be insured in a population the size of yours. The only time a system like that has ever been tried is communes with a population of a few hundred tops or Greek city states where around five sixths of the population were barred from the assemblies.

Then there's the education DK refers to, though I suspect that's rather less of an issue given the taste most of your elected representatives have for dumbing down any debate to a scarily reductive and witless level.

(Not sure what Caesar and Nero have to do with this, btw: they were both unelected Emperors who allowed certain powers to devolve to the richer members of the aristocracy. No bastard else got a voice, never mind a vote, in the glory that was Rome...)

Exactly. There are several political structures that would work great in theory, but on the scale necessary to run a large country they would fall apart. Democracy and Communism being the most obvious two. Both would work great, in theory, if the population was kept to a small number. But, once you increase the numbers to the size of the United States (or nearly any country on the planet), it becomes untenable.

I don't think the American political system is perfect, by any means, and there are certainly a whole host of elected representatives who don't take the time to educate themselves before voting. But, in the end, I'd still choose a Republic over a Democracy any day.

Ummmm....it`s not a pure republic .......either........

Oh, I know. But, in the grand scheme of things it is closer to a Republic than a Democracy. I was just being succinct for the sake of discussion. I suppose I should have said "I'll still choose a quasi-Republic with Democratic, Socialist, and Fascist tendencies over a pure Democracy any day."

And this semantics game is meaningful ,how?



Please..... do tell.....

I'm not playing a semantics game. I was just attempting to be succinct earlier. But, hey, if you want to get upset...that's on you.

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ORIGINAL: Owner59

From this point forward.....I absolve you of worrying about upsetting me.

And I promise not to worry about upsetting you.

Now please tell us......why this word game?

Democracies and republics aren`t mutually exclusive......

What`s the point?

This is like saying an orange is not a fruit because it`s not an apple........and just as rediculous.

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ORIGINAL: Moonhead

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ORIGINAL: Anaxagoras
The question as I see it comes down to direct or indirect democracy. When direct democracy existed in Athens, the paragon of nation state democracy at the time, there were concerns about it. Socrates and Plato disliked the system intensely because the “ignorant” masses were ruling the roost, which resulted in their nation loosing the Thirty Years War against Sparta, and ultimately Athenian culture fading…

The Athenian culture didn't let anybody but "fat asses" vote in the first place, though. No women, no slaves or helots, no more than a fifth of the population being entitled to have a say. That's hardly rule by the ignorant masses.

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If that's how a "true" democracy is supposed to work, fuck off with it. The only reason the Libertarians like the idea is because Robert Heinlein bigged it up a few times in the '50s. I think he liked the notion about the only way a helot could get into the assemblies was if they'd had a distinguished military career, as he'd picked up on that in a big way for Starship Troopers. Of course, if he was aware that in that context "distinguished" meant a little more "invalidated out early due to TB and then spending the rest of your life whining about it", he did his best to keep that under wraps...

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ORIGINAL: DaNewAgeViking

Robert A Heinlein, the famous science fiction author, once noted that 'Vox populi vox Dei' loosely translates to 'My God, how did we get into this mess?' Popular sovereignty is a nice idea, but it simply doesn't take into account for human greed, arrogance, ignorance, stupidity, etc. The initiative petition process mentioned is a prime example of bad government. As for those Washington fat-cats, the solution is greater accountability - make it easy to recall them if they do something wrong - say 10% of the popular vote if they commit certain specific acts (but not in general). Do that, and they, or their successors, would sing a whole different tune.

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Winston Churchill once said: "The best argument against democracy is five minutes, spent with the average voter."

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When direct democracy existed in Athens

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

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When direct democracy existed in Athens

When direct democracy existed in Athens, it was only wealthy white men who all lived in the same geographic area.

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ORIGINAL: Anaxagoras

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

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When direct democracy existed in Athens

When direct democracy existed in Athens, it was only wealthy white men who all lived in the same geographic area.

To the best of my knowledge there was significant poverty in Athens just like any other place at the time. What qualified male citizens to vote was a period of military service, which seems more equitable than qualifying by owning land which was almost exclusively in the domain of wealthy in the 19th Century.

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ORIGINAL: LadyHibiscus

Many people are genuinely stupid.  Not just ignorant of the zeitgeist and not up on current events, but genuinely not capable of abstract thought stupid.  I am just fine with not having them speak directly to every govenrment issue.